King of Spain Abdicated So His Son Wouldn’t “Wither Waiting” Like Prince Charles

Juan Carlos, king of Spain, announced last week—in a surprise decision—that he would be abdicating the throne, handing the proverbial royal baton to his 46-year-old son, Felipe. At 76 years old, Juan Carlos, per reports, had decided he wanted to let his son rule while he was “in his prime,” and many outlets last week couldn’t help but compare the Spanish succession to the situation across the water in Britain, where Prince Charles, 65 years old, now the oldest heir to the throne in Britain in over 300 years, continues to wait.

And now Juan Carlos has, per reports, made this comparison even more explicit, reportedly telling Rafael Spottorno, chief of the royal household, “I do not want my son to wither waiting like Prince Charles,” according to Spain’s El Mundo newspaper. “He saw, above all, that his son was in his prime and didn’t want to see him like Prince Charles who will be 66 in November,” the newspaper claims.

The Queen—who no doubt woke up this morning to a copy of El Mundo passive-aggressively slid underneath her door—is not looking to quit her day job anytime soon, however, as the Daily Beast notes “the chances of the Queen of England abdicating remain at absolute zero.” Not only did she commit to a “life of service” during her 21st-birthday speech in South Africa (“Though really, if everyone had to stick to everything they said on their 21st birthdays, we’d have a lot of people living all sorts of strange lives . . .” — Charles, muttering to Camilla while he brushes his teeth), but additionally, in the U.K., as the Daily Beast notes, “part of the reason for a reluctance to even consider resignation is that [it is] associated in the national consciousness exclusively with the darkest days of the monarchy, the abdication crisis in 1936.”